Over 50? Read this chilling New Yorker magazine article: How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

I read this article last night. It tells an incredible story that is happening in many states, in which elderly people are being taken from their homes and institutionalized without their consent or the consent of their children--even against the protests of their children!  Their assets, including their homes, are taken from them and put into the hands of state-appointed "guardians" who are free to do whatever they want with the elderly who have been put into their care, including making all decisions about their health care--what insurance they have and who their doctors are.

This article touched me even more deeply than it of course would have because of a personal experience of my own.  I have a dear friend in my home town in upstate New York who told me she and her husband were forced into a nursing home for a period of several months but were finally released not long ago.  She was shaking and crying when she told me and kept saying, "I don't want to talk about it.  I am too embarrassed!"  So I didn't learn all the details, but it chilled me to the bone to hear her tell of being taken from their home and forced into institutionalized living.  As we were talking on the phone, my friend told me she had absented herself from the living room and had taken herself and the phone into a spare room in her home where she couldn't be heard by a guardian type of person who was there at the time.  I don't know if this was a visiting nurse or someone else, but my friend appeared to be fearful of the person's presence in her home.

I am going to try to find out more about what was done to her and her husband, but it is obvious to me from her story and from the New Yorker article that "authority" figures have far too much power over the lives of the elderly. 

When you read the article,  you will see exactly what I mean.